Place shifting devices typically packetize media content that can be transmitted over a local or wide area network to a portable computer, mobile phone, personal digital assistant, remote television or other remote device capable of playing back the packetized media stream for the viewer. Placeshifting therefore allows consumers to view their media content from remote locations such as other rooms, hotels, offices, and/or any other locations where portable media player devices can gain access to a wireless or other communications network.
While placeshifting does greatly improve the convenience afforded to the viewer, challenges can arise in effectively creating and transmitting the encoded media stream. The variety of network environments (e.g., LAN, WAN, Internet, wireless telephone, etc.) that may be supported can lead to significant variations in encoding parameters over time. Moreover, digital networks, particularly those based on Ethernet and/or TCP/IP-type protocols, are inherently unpredictable, and network conditions can change rapidly even while the media stream is being transmitted. Furthermore, while various methods exist for arriving at an optimal bitrate selection for communication between a client and a server in such environments, such methods are typically slow in converging to such a bitrate.
It is therefore desirable to create systems and methods for achieving optimal bitrate in a network environment. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.